It's been very heartening too to have 5 different emails in the month from people who happen across the website and just write in with a correction needing to be made. And close to a dozen prior correspondents have written in with more information. It really is great to get such notes because it demonstrates that people care about us and our cause.
We do our best to keep errors down but they still creep in, and at this point we know that there remain masses of omissions! And we have my “fairy godmother” (as I call her – she has no Howes people at all in her ancestry and just wants to help) beavering away at recording the post-1858 English probate records so that we can extract the details for the site.
If I seem in reflective mood I am! I guess it's because earlier in the month I wrote an article about the site for Family Tree Magazine. I had to step back and try to summarize what we do, what we've done and It's due for publication in February, by the way, after which I hope to post a copy on the site, as long as the editor agrees. While my cousin and I started this, the results are a reflection of all of the contributions we have had.
It has been and remains a team effort. I hope you're all as proud of it as I am.
Other websites worthy of note this month:
http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/ This is a wonderful new archive from the Colindale collection of British regional newspapers already with 3,000,000 pages viewable and searchable online. It costs a lot for the information most people will get out of it, though. Some of the material is already available from the 19th Century Newspapers database available free through many local libraries in the UK and beyond. So I'd suggest using the free resource first. If you have an interest in going through old newspapers looking for HOWES and other names, do let me know.
http://www.ancestry.com/ and its national affiliates have just put online the City of London Freedom Admissions paperwork. It's not a big database in family history terms but potentially very important as it records details on Freemen and Apprentices, who came from all over the country to work in London from the late 1600's onward. You know I'm a member of the Guild of One-Name Studies (www.one-name.org). Many of these people are very experienced genealogists but in the few days since the archive was opened, I've been surprised to see 4 or 5 notes from members saying that they had broken through brickwalls in their own family research. I've started looking at the Howeses in there, but recommend taking a look in case one of your ancestors is in there
A few numbers to finish with:
- The GED file which holds our research is now over 1,500,000 lines!
- We have almost 52,000 people in the file with 360,000 facts and over 210,000 source citations
- 411 people have now signed up for these monthly updates
- In the last month we have served up 35,000 page views to nearly 3,000 visitors, who came from 11 different countries, a reflection of the English-speakers around the world, India being the major exception with no-one accessing. We also had visitors from Germany and Spain but they are expats – we know who you are, gentlemen!